State-owned BNI kicks off public offering campaign

State-owned BNI kicks off public offering campaign

JAKARTA (JP): State-owned Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) 1946
today begins its campaign to offer 25 percent of its paid-up
capital to the public later this year.

The sales campaign, called a roadshow in capital market
jargon, will travel to six other cities -- Bandung in West Java,
Surabaya in East Java, Medan in North Sumatra, Malang in East
Java, Semarang in Central Java and Ujungpandang in South Sulawesi
-- and to some of the world's major financial centers.

The overseas roadshow will be held from Oct. 14 to Oct. 24 in
major cities in Asia, Europe and the United States.

BNI, the largest state-owned bank in the country, announced
Friday that it had already filed a registration statement with
the Capital Market Supervisory Agency (Bapepam). Registration is
the most important step in a bank's public offering plan.

The bank, with total assets of Rp 32.35 trillion (US$13.7
billion as of June 30, said that it would sell around 25 percent
of its paid-up stock to the public to raise fresh funds for its
expansion program.

BNI has yet to announce when it will offer its shares to the
public or the volume of the initial public offering (IPO), which
is expected to become the largest after Telkom's share flotation
on the London, New York and Jakarta stock exchanges last
November.

Analysts predict that BNI's share issue, expected to reach
around Rp 1 trillion ($425 million), will be offered to the
public sometime in the second week of November.

The bank has appointed state-owned PT Danareksa Sekuritas, the
largest securities company in the country, as the main
underwriter of the offering. Lehman Brothers of the United States
has been assigned as the financial advisor for the underwriting
of the bank's shares on overseas markets and publicly-listed Bank
Dagang Nasional Indonesia as the settlement bank for the public
offering.

The bank said that JP Morgan has also been assigned as the
financial advisor during preparations for the IPO plan, while the
Ali Budiardjo, Nugrowo, Rekso Diputro law firm has been appointed
as legal advisor and Prasetyo Utomo as public accountant.

Deposits at the bank had reached Rp 17.90 trillion as of June
30 and its loans Rp 20.44 trillion.

Its pre-tax profit was recorded at Rp 198.6 billion in the
first semester of this year, or more than a half of last year's
pre-tax profit of Rp 378.7 billion.

The bank did not unveil its paid-up capital but said that its
capital adequacy ratio (CAR) is 9.1 percent of weighted-risk
assets.

The bank's IPO, first publicized in early 1994 and initially
scheduled to coincide with its 50th anniversary in July, was
delayed for undisclosed reasons. (hen)